Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION. I. The defendant Archias. Cicero’s client Archias was a Greek, born about the year 119 B.C.1, at Antioch, the chief city of Syria. His family held high rank, and in the schools of Antioch, which was at that time a home of learning and culture, he received a liberal education2. In those days, both in Greek and Roman communities, the study of poetry formed the most important part of education. Like Pope, Archias seems when a child to have
lisped in numbers, and his natural cleverness was so cultivated that before he had arrived at manhood his fame as a poet was widely known beyond the bounds of his native city. He was especially skilful as an improvisatore3, and ranked with the famous Anti- pater of Sidon4, who, as Cicero tells us, could pour forth verses in any metre on any subject at a moment’s notice5. The written poems of Archias were thought by his contemporaries worthy to be placed side by side with the works of the old Greek Classic poets6. Some poor epigrams in the Greek Anthology7 are 1 See n. on 5 practextatus. an ‘Apxfas MirvXwuo;, two to an s 4. 'Apx'as xeon-epos, one to an 'A. 3 18. Bvfi’T, os, one to an 'A. MaKe5wx, Quintilian, X. 7. 19. thirty-three (ten doubtfully) to an 5 Cic. De Or. III. 194. (Some Archias who is not denned. These of Antipater’s epigrams are in the last poems, which are probably not Greek Anthology.) Cf. Pro Arch. all the work of one hand, contain 18. more than a hundred lines. Cic. 6 18. spenks of an epigram by Archias 7 Four epigrams are ascribed to IJe Div. I. 79. attributed to an Archias who may have been our Archias, but the name (of Doric origin) was so common among the Greeks that we cannot feel certain. No fragments of the longer poems we know Archias to have written have come dow…